At one Northern California high school, a teacher allegedly had students invent different tribes and pretend to fight each other in a wildly inaccurate lesson about tribal conflicts that deeply disturbed a Yurok student.

At another high school, the principal allegedly referred to her Native American students as “a pack of wolves” and other derogatory terms, bopped children on the head with a clipboard and disproportionately expelled or suspended Native American students based on minor infractions.

These accounts were among the many harrowing allegations described in two federal lawsuits filed December 18 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California against two Humboldt County School Districts—Eureka City and Loleta Union—that accuse school officials of perpetuating systemic physical, emotional and sexual abuse of Native American and African-American students. The ACLU lawyers said the accounts from numerous Native American parents were reminiscent of American Indian boarding schools, where tribal children were beaten, sexually abused and often died of malnutrition in a government-funded effort to assimilate them.